


All Good Things

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Break Up, Canon-Typical Derogatory Language, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 18:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21184274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: Annie breaks up with Sam, and Gene picks up the pieces.





	All Good Things

_Friday_

She's breaking up with him. In the staff canteen.

“Sam?” A hand touches his arm gently, and he looks at it. Everything sounds like it's underwater, but not with beeping and disembodied voices – no, they stopped when he came back, when he chose the seventies, when he chose _her_.

And now she's breaking up with him.

He stands, chair falling backwards with a clatter.

“Sam!” exclaims Annie, getting to her feet too. “Are you okay?” He looks at her. She's worried, her face crumpled in that familiar expression, the one he's put there too many times, that's probably why she's – he breathes deeply, rubbing the bridge of his nose. This happens. Relationships end, and she's not had many, and he's making this hard on her. Too hard. She looks a second from caving, from saying forget it, but she wouldn’t have sprung this on him on a whim. She's not cruel and she's not reckless. If she's doing this, it’s what she wants.

“Yeah,” he manages, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Yeah, sorry, course I am. Just, you know.”

She nods, sitting down again, but he can't imagine joining her and talking this through at a Formica table over a plate of reheated mince.

“I've got to-” he hooks a thumb over his shoulder, like a sixth sense is calling him to a case, and she nods sadly. Leaving him his exit.

He walks fast, purposefully, banging into the toilets on the second floor. Hardly anyone comes in here, not after they've heard the rumours about DI Peterson – heart attack in the last cubicle at a Christmas party. He swings into a stall and sits, hard, on the closed toilet seat.

God, she's left him. It shouldn’t be a surprise – she's going places, is Annie. She'll rise through the ranks, meet new people – not all of them dinosaurs like Ray – and he'd worried she might leave him behind. He knows he's no catch; the one thing he had going for him was a sense of respect, something to make up for his madness, but thankfully, decency is getting more common every day. He just thought they'd have more time. He'd hoped for forever.

He won't cry, not here.

He came back for her, and now he doesn't have her. That's all. So he's stuck in the seventies? Not the worst decade. The eighties were fun. He'll store up a good supply of music to see him through the nineties, party like it’s a new millennium all over again and then – God. He'll be retiring by the time he gets home.

“Boss?”

Shit, Chris.

“Yeah.”

“The Guv says, uh, if we lose Clarke because you're having a-”

“Right, I'll be right out Chris.”

Crime goes on. Time to do the day job.

\--

“Crying into your pint are you, Gladys? Heard about Cartwright.”

Gene shoulders his way onto the stool next to his, but Sam doesn't bother to look up, following instead the swirling patterns in the wood of the bar. So much for a quiet drink – he thought the darts game would keep everyone distracted. Should have gone to a different boozer, but he's always found Nelson kind of calming, and he'd seen Annie resolutely walk the other way at clocking off time, like she was leaving it as his territory. Seemed churlish to go home.

“No, I'm not crying-” He gives up, no energy to argue, and takes another gulp. “Either buy me a commiseration pint or leave me alone.”

“No can do.”

“I'm not buying _you_ one.”

Gene makes a serious of complicated gestures to Nelson, and before he knows it, a glass of amber liquid rests against his knuckles. “Break-ups are a whiskey situation, Sam. Any man worth his salt knows that.”

Sam grabs it, knocks it back and chases it with beer. “Is that right.”

Gene nods approvingly. “Finally, you've got the hang of drinking as a man. Nelson! Two more.”

–

_Saturday_

He doesn't remember much when he wakes up in the morning – just flashes, burning through his throbbing head. More drinks, Nelson stacking chairs. An ill-advised dart game that left holes in the wall. The cold air of the walk home, his arm slung over Gene's shoulders and legs like jelly, the two of them weaving about so much he's surprised they made it.

Make it they did, because he recognises that stain. It's his ceiling.

He swallows, mouth dry and tasting like something died in it. Water. He needs water.

He heaves himself upright, and pauses, letting his stomach settle from the movement while he cradles his forehead in one hand. Paracetamol. Are also necessary. Were they even a thing in the seventies? Aspirin if not. Just something, for the love of God.

He stumbles to his feet, takes one step and trips, something squishy on the carpet, and goes down heavily with a grunt. The squishy something grunts in response. It's a disturbingly familiar tone.

“Guv?”

“Get off my bleedin’ face.” A large hand emerges from a camel hair coat and shoves him to the side so hard his hip bumps the floor. That'll leave a bruise.

Okay, he thinks. That’s a bit unusual – Gene’s never stayed over before, but perhaps he just passed out. Strange that he’d leave Sam the bed though.

“If you rustle up a bacon sarnie in the next ten minutes we'll say no more about how you shoved your superior officer and made 'im sleep on the floor.”

He sounds... exactly like he always does, when Sam can barely think through the pounding in his skull. “'M not your wife.”

“Thank god.” Gene sits up, rumpled, tie askew but otherwise such a familiar sight. “Jesus Tyler, you look like a prozzie who got hit by a runaway train.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

–

_Monday_

It's a wrench to pull himself out of bed, then a wrench to get ready, then a wrench to make it up the steps of the station. He'd both been longing for a return to work – something to take his mind off everything – and dreading it, because there's no way he can avoid Annie in an office as small as theirs.

Not that he wants to avoid Annie. He just doesn't think he can see her yet. He's not sure he could handle her concerned glances, her soft, comforting presence. Unless that's just for people she hasn't dumped. He's not sure he can handle their absence either. Annie acting cold, or even just professional... it doesn't compute.

He breathes a sigh of relief on entering the office, because despite his feet-dragging, he's made it in before her. He slumps down at his desk and pulls a bunch of case files out of the stack, but they're all small, petty crimes he should pass on to Chris or – or Annie. He take notes anyway, getting familiar with the specifics, and sorts them into two piles. Chris can take the break-in at the newsagents. Annie should handle the school vandalism case, she's less likely to stick her foot in it and get the station a complaint from the headmaster.

Speaking of, it's nearly ten and she's still not in. Perhaps the Guv sent her out on something?

By lunchtime, he's officially worried. It's been a slow morning, and if she was out on something surely either Chris or Ray would have gone with her? But they've been playing catch over his head, ignoring every glare and pointed comment he sent their way, and it's part of his role to look after his team. He can check with Gene. That's not being too familiar.

“Annie?” Gene shuffles some papers, and slaps a file down on top. “Had her transferred.”

“_What?”_

“She's back in plod for now, when a new DC position comes up she'll flutter her eyelashes and spout some psycho bollocks and walk right into it.”

“I- that's- you can't _do_ that Guv, it's unfair dismiss-”

“I need my DI on top form, and an ex-bint cluttering up the place isn't gonna help that, no matter how pretty her pins are.”

Sam gapes. He leans forward and braces himself, palms on the desk. “Gene,” he tries, in a reasonable tone. “It's  _Annie._ ”

“Exactly. 'Annie'. You're never gonna forget what she looks like naked, and she won't forget what you look like neither, god help her. Can't have a DC picturing her DI in the buff-”

“Oh, but it was fine when she was seeing it in real time-”

“Workplace relations, isn't that one of your fancy pants terms? Kept you hungry, eyes on the prize.” 

Sam sighs. Every time he thinks he's got a handle on the seventies – or has started to get through to Gene – something like this happens. “If you can't handle a workplace break-up, you can't handle a workplace relationship.”

“You don't have to handle it.”

“Yes, I do! Because you can't just-”

“It's not special treatment, Gladys. I'd do this for Ray, or Chris, and they'd thank me. Buy me a pint, even. That's not a hint, by the way, it's an order.”

“That's a bigger problem,” he mutters. “Fine. Forget that it's Annie. This is _WDC_ _Cartwright_. An asset. That you've just – just jettisoned from your team. She's a better detective than-"

“Careful what you say, Sam.”

He rolls his eyes. “You know I'm right.”

Silence. 

“I won't have her career ruined over this. I don't need your 'boys club' protection.” He leans close, staring into Gene's eyes, and hopes he can see how serious he is. “Reinstate her. Now. Or I walk.”

–

_Tuesday_

A cup of tea appears in front of his bleary eyes, and he finds himself reaching for it and taking a swig before registering how it appeared. He looks up into kind eyes that make his heart clench. He coughs.

“You don't need to make me tea, Annie.”

She shrugs. “I don't mind.”

“No, really-”

“I don't _mind_, Sam.” She reaches, then stops herself, like she was about to pat him on the arm and thought better of it. He looks down at his report. “As easy to make two as one.” He nods, still looking down, but can feel her eyes on the back of his neck. “I heard I had you to thank for this.”

When he glances up, she's picking at her shirt, a mustard yellow rather than neatly pressed white. “Shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” he mutters.

“Still.” She smiles at him, but it's the sad smile he's seen too often. The one that reminds him of when he first arrived, and she felt sorry for him. Back then, he was happy for it – for any pleasant, warm response in a hard world he barely recognised. Now he knows what she looks like laughing, and in love, and a smile made of transfer paper can't hold a candle. “A lot of guys wouldn't have. Thanks.”

“I – I hope we can be friends again.”

“'Course. I want that too.”

“And don't – you really don't need to make me tea, Annie.” She does pat him this time, just once, on the shoulder, and he can't help but close his eyes at the contact. He'd got used to it, he realises, her easy closeness. And these past few days without it have felt cold.

“I did before,” she reminds him. “And you're still my DI, after all.”

He forces a grin, wondering if it comes off casual or looks like a grimace. “Chris never makes me tea.”

“Chris doesn't know how.” 

His smile is real this time, if small, and he watches as she walks away. The office doors swing shut behind her. 

“Well that was painful.” He jumps, twisting, to find Gene looming over him. “Friends? You weren't friends before, you've been panting after what's under her skirt since day one.”

“I haven't-” he sighs. He sort of has, but Gene Hunt has a special way of putting things that always makes him want to disagree. Besides, how to explain that it wasn't her eyes, her legs, her tits – but that she was the one person he felt he could talk to? The one person who knew what he saw, and heard, and yeah, maybe she thought he was mad but she still looked at him like he was worth something. 

Gene frowns. “You're truly at the top of your game, I can see we all made the right decision about keeping her here.”

“We did.”

“Don't make me regret it, Tyler.”

“Men and women can be friends, you know.”

“Sounds like hodgepodge to me. No man can be friends with a girl 'less they're not right in the head. 'Specially one like Annie.”

“You secretly lusting after her, Guv?”

“Nothing secret about it, she's got a lovely pair of-”

“_Guv!”_

“Calm your knickers, Gladys, I was gonna say legs.”

“You're not friends with Phyllis, then, you're panting after her, are you?”

“Phyllis,” he jabs a finger into the report in front of Sam, smudging the ink so badly it'll have to be rewritten. “Is a fellow officer.”

“So is Annie.”

Gene smirks, folding his arms. “Thought she was to be known as WDC Cartwright now.”

–

_Thursday_

“Right, that's enough.” Gene turns round from throwing a suspect back into his cell, and brushes his hands like he's clearing off dust. “He can stew, we can drink.”

Sam groans. “Not the pub again.”

“Of course the pub again, it's five o'clock, where did you want to go?”

“After three nights of heavy drinking? Somewhere without alcohol. Home, maybe.”

Gene frowns. “Sounds terrible. Get your coat.”

“No.”

“What are you gonna do instead?” He looks incredulous, like there's nothing to do but go to the pub, nothing better than a night with the boys – beer and fags and whiskey and darts. Sam thinks of this time last week, when he'd cooked Annie a lasagne and they'd eaten it by the light of a candle and then watched television together on the sofa. 

She'd have already been thinking about how to leave him.

“Something non-fried for tea. TV. Maybe the Open University.”

“You're a right ponce sometimes, Tyler.”

“It's called a healthy lifestyle.”

“It's called being an antisocial bugger.”

–

_Friday_

He turns the pub down again on Friday, and that's a bigger deal, but he'd seen Annie put on a fresh coat of lipstick as Chris flicked the lights off in the office, and he didn't want to drown his sorrows thinking of where else she might be tonight. If he doesn't turn up, he can imagine her there, gin and tonic in hand, chatting with Phyllis or one of the WPCs.

He's regretting it a bit now, shut up alone in his flat with nothing and no one to occupy his mind. He throws down the book he's not reading – he's been staring at the same page for half an hour, and couldn't tell anyone, even under oath, what happened the page before.

Tea, he thinks, putting on the kettle. He's making it more for something to do than because he wants to drink it, but the motions are familiar and comforting, and maybe that's the height of sadness, but – a banging on the door startles him so much he cracks the kettle on the side of the cup. 

“Tyler! Open the bloody door or I'll open it for you!”

“Guv?” He wrenches it wide as Gene readies his position for a kick, and steps back quickly lest he gets a foot to the groin. 

“The princess shall go to the ball.”

“What?” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “How drunk are you?”

“Not a sausage, Sammy.” It's obviously a lie, the smell of whiskey strong on his breath as he pushes past and into the flat. Gene just grabs Sam's jacket though, lying crumpled on the floor where he'd dropped it earlier. “Thought Cinderella was meant to be a cleaner,” he grunts, throwing it at Sam.

“Guv, has there been a crime?”

“No, the criminal scum are sleeping tucked up in their beds tonight.”

“So?”

“So? So it's time for all good police men to live it up, and I have a spare ticket.” He tucks a scrap of paper into Sam's top pocket, and Sam pulls it back out to read.

“Boxing?” Gene nods, eyes bright, and claps his hands.

“Coat on Sammy-”

“It's not really my thing-”

“How can two blokes punching ten hells out of each other not be your thing?”

“Think back over that sentence, take a couple of therapy sessions, and you should come to your own answer. Take Ray.”

“I'm not taking Ray.” Gene grabs his arm, and propels the two of them out the door, pulling it shut behind them. Sam is just grateful he never got around to taking off his shoes. “I'm taking you.”

“To the boxing.”

“I'd take you to the football, Frances, but you support the worst team in the history of the world, so it was this or ice skating and my tutu's at the cleaners.”

“It's ballet dancers who wear tutus, Guv.”

Gene rolls his eyes. “You would know that, you fairy.”

–

_Saturday_

He wakes up surprisingly early, surprisingly sober. Seems boxing agrees with him, or at least boxing Gene Hunt-style. It had involved rather more shouting, jeering and stamping than he'd thought, but being in the crowd had been weirdly exhilarating. Between that and the couple of beers he'd drunk, nothing could stop him from sleeping straight through.

He's not sure what he's going to do now, though, because it's 8am, he's eaten toast and drunk tea, and now the whole weekend stretches out before him like a blank page.

No plans.

In this situation in 2006, if Maya had been away, he'd have fired up the DVD player, or messed around on the internet. Here, he's stuck with books – most of which are so full of misogynistic, chauvinistic rubbish (how had he never realised how bad the James Bond novels were, first time around?) they make his jaw hurt any time he can focus enough to follow the story – or TV. All three channels of it.

If he was still with Annie, they'd have gone somewhere. Not even necessarily anywhere good. Sometimes just a walk around the neighbourhood, or chores – the supermarket, the dry cleaners – but doing it with her felt like entertainment. More than that. It felt like a life. 

Doing it alone feels like an endless conveyor belt of grey.

The phone rings, shrill in the quiet of the flat, and he jumps. “Guv,” he answers, deciphering the cigarette-wracked cough he's greeted with. “Criminal scum awoken already?”

“Still smothered under their mother's blankets. Get over here.”

'Over here' turns out to be Gene's house, and he finds the door unlatched when he arrives. He tiptoes in – Gene hadn't sounded worried in the call, but anything could have happened since, and the last thing he needs is to lose the element of surprise if some former crim has tracked him down. He rounds the corner, wishing he had anything he could use as a weapon - 

and finds Gene, ankle deep in scraps of wallpaper. From the little still attached to the walls, he can see it's floral pattered, with a pink background. It looks like something his grandmother would have chosen. 

“Gene?”

“Oh good, you're here. Stick the kettle on.”

“You're... decorating?”

“I hate this wallpaper. The best thing about the old bitch leaving me is that I get to rip it to shreds.”

“I see.” His eyes drift to the steamer at Gene's feet, the scraper in his hand. DIY. That's the big Saturday morning emergency.

“Oi, Tyler.”

“What?”

“Tea. Seems you need it.”

It's easier to make it than argue, especially as he could do with a cup. He even roots around in the cupboards enough to unearth a packet of shortbread that must have been forgotten, going by the date on the packet. As he wanders back into the lounge, he sees a stack of violently orange rolls.

“Um, Guv.”

“Grand.” Gene grabs a mug and takes a big gulp, before ripping into the biscuits. 

“You're not putting that up, are you?” He points at the stack of wallpaper. The orange is shaped in gloopy blobs, he sees, as Gene unearths a sample proudly. The orange blobs have brown outlines, and smaller cream blobs scattered amongst them like confetti. 

“Finally. A bit of proper colour, not all this namby pamby pastel shite.”

“It's a bit... bright?” Sam tries. It's very seventies. He's only ever seen such wallpaper on property shows where they laugh and rip it down, or several layers down on his own walls when he'd had to strip it all back to use paint instead. Duck egg blue, he remembers, is what he picked for his bedroom after considering all the options. A calming colour. Not like – well.

Gene looks at him like he's grown an extra head. “Thought you'd be all for it Sammy boy, it's,” his face twists a little, but carries on, “trendy.”

“Oh, very trendy,” he agrees, hurriedly. Gene has chosen this, he realises. He wants this. “But trends change-” oh thank God, do they change- “and then you'll have to redecorate. What about using it for a feature wall?”

“A feature what?”

“Wall. Use the paper for one wall and then pick out a colour – the cream! - for the other three walls. All the trendiness, but easier to re-do.”

“I've got all the paper now.”

It's a battle he's destined to lose, and to be honest with himself, he probably shouldn't care this much about his DCI's living room anyway. So he helps him hang wallpaper instead, and if the final result gives him a bit of a headache – well. Gene seems happy.

–

_Three weeks later. Monday._

He's got paint under his nails, he realises, trying to pick it out. It's dried on though, he needs white spirit. Or natural skin regeneration. That's probably what Gene would do, he thinks, snickering to himself. The manly way to be, just let the dirt fall off in time.

“It's nice to see you smile,” a voice says, and he looks up to find Annie perched on the desk in front of him. She sets a cup of tea down for him, bourbon biscuit balanced on the saucer. 

“Thanks,” he says with another grin, dunking the biscuit and shoving it in his mouth whole. He'd crashed at Gene's place last night – re-painting the bathroom had taken longer than either of them expected, for such a small room, and then there was a Carry On film on the telly – and the man hasn't gone shopping for non-alcohol based foodstuffs... well, ever, possibly.

She grins back, drifting back to her desk, and he realises with a jolt that her smile did nothing. No warmth pooling in his stomach, no clench in his chest. “Hey Annie,” he calls. 

“Yes?”

“We should all go dancing this weekend,” he suggests. She looks unsure, hovering, and he continues, “Chris! You'd be up for it, right? Club this weekend?”

“Right Boss, if the first round's on you.”

“Only fair, I suppose. Ray?” The other man shrugs, chewing his gum, but Sam figures if Chris is in, Ray will probably show up. “Annie?” he asks, turning back. She's still clutching her teacup. “As friends. Ask Looper and Parkson too.”

She smiles at the mention of her old colleagues, the ones she'd said one night that she so rarely got to see since making DC. “Right Boss,” she agrees, and he laughs at the name. “This weekend. Friends."

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a kudos or comment if you liked this (or constructive feedback if you didn't!). Thanks :)


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